


The Neighbour

by fartherfaster



Series: Botanical Diaries [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Ninjas - Freeform, please read the notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 16:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2700125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fartherfaster/pseuds/fartherfaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>americachavez:</b> Marvel give me a short about Sharon’s undercover time as a nurse/Steve’s neighbor and that one time she had to fight off ninjas from Steve’s apartment while he was like, making dinner and sitting alone reading Obama’s biography.<br/><b>stardustandstrawberries:</b> With the music turned up really loudly because he’s a gentleman and he thought the noises were her having sex.<br/>-<br/>“You vetted my neighbour,” he sighs, “and you read my mail.” The last bit, though, is mostly teasing.</p><p>“I didn’t vet her,” the agent responds a little testily, “and I’m the only one who weeds the creepers out of your literal and digital mailboxes. Be thankful.”<br/>-<br/>The wall that separates Steve's apartment from his neighbour Sharon's is very thin. He learns to cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Neighbour

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Marvel give me a short...](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/85706) by americachavez. 



> Based on a tumblr text post by tumblr user americachavez that wouldn't leave me alone. Not at all explicit or gory, though Steve misunderstands his neighbour's black eye and immediately jumps to the conclusion of domestic violence. Sharon is actually just kicking ass and taking names the way she does in the movies, but the occasional bruising is a little incongruous with her cover as a nurse. Your well-being is important to me, readers. If this sounds triggering or harmful, give it a pass.
> 
> Set immediately before CA:TWS. Unbeta'd fluff. Love yourselves, kids, and stick it to the Man, unless that makes you nervous; in which case, please follow the handbook.

Steve reads through all the presidents’ autobiographies. Well, not _all_ of them, because there’s a stinking lot, but all of the ones that primarily cover their terms in office, and then only starting at Coolidge, even though he’d been around when it was published. As he finishes each, he moves to most highly-regarded biographies of those same men during those same terms, and he learns ugly things that surprise him and sometimes uglier things that don’t. Things got awfully biased once he hit the sixties, so he picks up more volumes and reads through the accounts of other major players: Malcolm X, and MLK, and later the Stonewall Riots, trying to fit it all together. He understands a little better why some people - people who’d lived through the politics and broken promises and the hate, the absolute _scandal_ of it - are so ready to throw down over his return; in some cases, over his supposed existence at all. He finds it easier to piece together the international history SHIELD fields him when he’s got somewhere to put it; the conflicts and the genocides and the violence and sometimes, blessedly sometimes the humanity of good people, the bravery and sheer determination to overcome all make more sense when they’re not in a vacuum. He understands, too, why some young people reject him on principle; they’ve been told he stands for the codgy, holier-than-thou high-ground of marital purity and strict social obedience. It couldn’t be farther from the truth, and it feels like a slap, sometimes, that this is what he woke up to, this discord. But he still sees couples on benches and in the subway - of varying sexes - necking in obliviousness, kids still laugh and scream in the streets when the fire hydrants are flushed in the summer, and there are educational charities for girls in places he’s never been and has to practice pronouncing. Ice cream comes in an overwhelming variety and the amount of information and music, _the music_ he can find online… It’s not all bad. It hasn’t been great, but it’s not all bad.

\--

It’s been a quiet summer since the Avengers were tossed together so hard that they managed to stick; he’s had a few speaking engagements, a library reopening, the like. There’s an agent he’s a little soft on who handles all of the mail and requests he gets like a mean batter once she learns how uncomfortable some of it makes him. She’s brash and a little highly strung and very highly caffeinated, and when he asked how on Earth she’d managed a level-six security clearance with _three weeks’ experience_ , she’d said she ‘knew a guy with a hammer’ and then asked how he felt about a children’s cancer ward that could use a friendly face. Steve decided then not to ask any more questions, and she remains unfailingly unimpressed by his… everything. She even throws out film recommendations on the scarce occasion when they meet face-to-face. It’s September when she says, “You’re getting a new neighbour,” and there’s a blind moment when Steve stupidly thinks it’s going to be her.

“Oh,” he says intelligently.

She smirks a little and gives him a very thin file. “She’s a nurse.” Then she hands over a stack of proper letter mail, with a few folded printouts. “These are mostly thank-yous and you’re-so-cools from little kids, and a few teenagers. Thought you might like to see them, maybe write a line back.”

“You vetted my neighbour,” he complains, “and you read my mail.” The last bit, though, is mostly teasing.

“ _I_ didn’t vet her,” the agent responds a little testily, “and _I’m_ the only one who weeds the creepers out of your literal and digital mailboxes. Be thankful.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She squints at him. “Get out.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Steve retreats with his mail and his vetted neighbour’s information, laughing as he goes.

\--

Sharon is, in fact, a nurse, and she keeps the odd hours of hospital shifts that disguise his occasional callouts very well. The first time they meet properly - more than a slight wave and nod and _hi! bye!_ \- Steve is coming back from a city function, black tie, and she’s in lavender scrubs that smell slightly. Her bag doesn’t look too heavy, but Steve can tell by her posture that she’s probably been on her feet all day and is definitely favouring one wrist, and he remembers the days when five flights of steps was a literal mountain to his asthmatic lungs and watery knees. So he says, clearing his throat first so he doesn’t startle her, “Miss, I, uh, I’m your neighbour… would you like me to carry that?”

When she turns around, the last thing he’s expecting to see is a pretty face with a black eye in its early, purpling stages, and he knows he doesn’t do very well in hiding his surprise. She recognises him, though, and lets out a little breath. “Yeah,” she says, passing over a canvas bag of what Steve guesses are spare clothes and groceries, keeping her purse to herself. “That’d be nice, thanks.” The wrist she’s holding close to her chest is wrapped tightly in some kind of plastic brace, her palm supported at unnatural angle.

They take the steps slowly and in companionable silence. “What’s your name?” she asks, on the second storey landing.

“Steve,” he says, remembering that his buzzer plate says _G. Stevens_ a moment too late.

She squints at him, but it obviously hurts her face. “Hiding from an ex?” she asks.

It’s an easy excuse. “Something like that,” he says. “What’s your name?”

“Sharon,” she says, as they round the third storey. “Nurse, as you can tell.”

“Is that how…?” he trails off, unsure if it’s polite to ask. “I mean…”

“Oh,” Sharon lets out a gust of embarrassed laughter, “yeah. Lots of elbows in the ER. Sometimes not always accidental ones. Gotta watch out.”

The words feel rehearsed and settle sour in Steve's belly. Sharon wavers on the next step and Steve watches her grip on the handrail tighten, her knuckles showing white. He lingers one step after her and mostly in her gravitational path to block her fall, just in case. He notices then that she’s favouring the same knee, too.

“Must’a been a lot of elbows,” he says.

“Something like that,” she parrots him.

The fourth storey passes in silence.

He stops outside her door, outside of arm’s reach. Once she’s one-handed-managed to find her keys and unlock her door, he holds the bag out to her, doesn’t presume a welcome inside. She doesn’t offer.

Steve takes another step away. “Well,” he says, “you can always knock or holler or something, you know, in case those elbows come back.”

She smiles at him faintly. “It’s taken care of,” she says, “but thanks.”

“Well,” he says, taking another backwards step to his door, “still.”

Her smile relaxes into something more genuine. “Goodnight, Steve.”

He reaches for his own keys. “Goodnight.”

\--

“Will you do me a favour?” Steve asks, in the middle of September and the day after he’s seen Sharon come home with a limp, _again_. The agent holds up a finger and finishes her phone call tersely, and Steve is grateful she’s given somebody else the short stick she’s known for.

“That depends,” she says. “What kind of favour?”

“My neighbour, Sharon,” he starts, and then doesn’t really know what to say. “She, ugh, there’s a lot of _elbows_ ,” he says emphatically.

“What.”

He looks around her desk for a moment because he can’t recall this agent's name, and is distracted not when he recognises his own name upside-down, but also Dr Banner’s, and Stark’s, and Kate Bishop’s, the other Hawkeye he knows by voice only. She doesn’t shift her gaze from his face and neatly changes her posture, planting her elbow and forearm over the documents. He wonders if she knows Natasha.

Instead, he asks, “Is that not a euphemism now?”

“ _What_ ,” she says again, looking at him intently.

“Is there any way,” he says, hand on the back of his neck, “can you check…” He takes a breath and gathers himself, sitting at the chair in front of her desk. “Look, I don’t know the first thing about how to handle domestic stuff now, but I’m worried about my neighbour. She’s been limping, and last week she had a black eye, and I just want to know… If SHIELD vetted her once, can you get them to do it again, and make sure there’s no guy sore over her?”

The young woman before him becomes a beacon of efficiency, writing things down and pulling up phone numbers. “Has she had anyone at her apartment?”

“No,” Steve says. “But she’s come home with some ugly bruises twice now.”

“Okay,” the agent says, “I’ve flagged someone to assess her workplace. These are some numbers,” she says, jotting them down on the back of a business card, “but really, only call them if she’s seriously in trouble, or if someone gets into her place, or, like,” she looks for words, “there’s shouting or stuff.”

Steve doesn’t feel that appeased.

“Come back in two days,” she says, more kindly. “If she’s in trouble, we’ll find out, and we’ll help.”

Steve flips the card over, and feels a sense of relief when he realises it’s got her name on it. “Thank you, Miss Lewis.”

“Agent.”

“Wha - oh.” He hauls his negligent professionalism up by its bootstraps, standing more formally and nodding. “Agent Lewis.”

She squints at him in a familiar, friendly threat. “Out.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The comfortable exchange improves his mood tremendously.

\--

Darcy is gobsmacked when the neighbour walks into her office at 9:08 the following morning. So gobsmacked, in fact, that she only manages to say, “Neighbour,” dumbly, and then feels her face heat when she notices the Neighbour has a _level eight_ security badge and an ID that recognises her as the SHIELD-legendary Agent Thirteen.  _Of course._

Agent Thirteen’s mouth thins to a tight line. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Darcy says, still a little bit shocked. “So you’re definitely okay, then.” She doesn’t fail to notice that she’s moving stiffly in her heels, or that her left eye is still surrounded by a muddy shade of faded bruising.

“Tell Captain Rogers not to worry.” It’s not a question.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Captain Rogers will not find out.”

“No, ma’am.”

Agent Thirteen nods, and then pivots on the spot, looking around Darcy’s office. She’s very proud of her space and the inspection makes her nervous. She holds herself very still.

“This meeting never happened,” Agent Thirteen tells her tonelessly. Darcy nods, and she sweeps out of her office not two minutes after breezing in.

Darcy lets out a massive breath after she counts ten heel-clacks down the tiled corridor, and then discards her headset. “ _What the hell_ ,” she says into her hands, followed by, “ _how in the name of Thor_.”

Kate Bishop, Hawkeye-the-younger, just so happens to be outside her open office door in time to hear her, and looks at Darcy quizzically.

“I know,” Hawkeye says, in what she must think is a sympathetic manner. “I ask myself that all the time.” And then she keeps walking, her quiver clicking and clattering in time with her steps.

Darcy folds her arms over her desk and leans her forehead down, looking sadly at Christopher the Office Cactus. “What is _my life_ ,” she tells him, “I’ve been spookified.”

\--

Captain Rogers, as expected, comes back the following day. Darcy has practiced smiling around what she needs to say until it feels natural.

He comes in, closing the door all but a few inches.

“Letters,” she hands over first, “and a list to choose from: Firefighters’ Benefit, Community College reopening, or I can get you tickets to the GLAAD Media Awards, you plus one.”

“Glaaaad?” He asks, stretching out the vowel.

“Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation,” she says, “I figured you’re far more progressive than Congress would like you to be. Also, your Obama biographies came,” and she hands over two slim cardboard boxes covered in the smiling Amazon logo.

He flips through the letters and says, “Yeah, definitely, that one. Will someone get mad?”

“Likely some right-wing newscasters,” she dismisses, “but you’d please a far greater proportion than you’d piss off.” She looks at him carefully. “Captain, don’t you have a publicist? A PR manager?”

He gets stuck on a young child’s drawing, shows it to her with a flash of a smile. “I don’t know,” he says, “I don’t think so.”

“Hm.”

He stops abruptly at the sound she makes. Before he can say anything, though, she dismisses, “No, no, you don’t get a say on that one. It means I’m PR-ing for half the Avengers and I have grounds to demand a raise.”

“Oh,” he says, laughing a little. “Any news…?” he asks, getting to the meat of things.

She points at the guest’s chair as she roots around for some paperwork. Captain Rogers sits lightly, and Darcy pulls up the prepared documents. “The incident two weeks ago was from a rowdy bachelor party that went south,” she says, giving him a file, “and it’s all documented. That time it literally was an elbow, but it was attached to a drunk 250-pound man who lost a tag-team fight with gravity and alcohol.”

He looks over the hospital documentation, the hasty signature of the resident on call who had apparently also taken a hit before the patient had been restrained. “And last week?”

Darcy passes over another file with a look of consternation. “Something about soccer netting?”

He reads the information twice, and then looks at Darcy for clarification.

“The nurse at the desk said everyone involved was still really embarrassed,” she tells him. “I didn’t really want to push him.”

“Yeah,” Captain Rogers nods. “Yeah, I can get that.” He passes back both files.

They sit in uncomfortable silence for a moment before Darcy says, “So! No elbows.”

He smiles at her, the corner of his mouth twitching up. “No elbows,” he parrots.

Darcy looks away from him, scratching a note on a post-it. “I’ll email you directly when your tickets are ready. The event is on the 18th.” She waits a moment, and then adds, “Your email password is your birth date.”

The captain stands. “Agent Lewis,” he says.

“Is that everything, Captain?” Darcy asks.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She squints at him traditionally through her heavily-rimmed glasses. “Ask Neighbour to be your date.”

Something complicated happens on his face, but he says, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Shoo.”

He gives her a sloppy salute before he turns away, books and letters under his arm.

\--

Dr Banner had recommended both yoga and Thai food, so Steve tries the Thai food first. It take him three tries to learn to navigate the menu of the best-yelped place he can find on foot, and his sinuses suffer for it, but once he gets it, the favours are extraordinary. He’s reheating leftovers in the oven and fixing noodles and hunting in his pantry for the cashews he bought when he hears an indistinct thump from Sharon’s apartment, followed by a feminine whine. He leaves the kitchen to stand closer to the wall that separates their apartments, and without trying to eavesdrop too much, his enhanced hearing gives him heavily breathing from two people and the sound of a lot of fabric rustling. There’s another thump up against the wall, this time followed by a louder, masculine groan, and Steve feels his face heat in a way that has nothing to do with Thai food.

He never really uses the television, but he hurries over to it and flicks impatiently through the channels, because now that he knows what he’s hearing, Steve finds himself hearing far too much of it. “Football is loud, right,” he says to himself, and turns the volume up, going back to the kitchen when the noodle pot boils over, water sizzling on the burner.

The television stays on until well into the post-game highlights, and Steve still doesn’t even know who’s playing, _who played_ , let alone who won, but Sharon’s apartment seems all right. He turns the television off, and can hear Sharon shuffling around, followed by the familiar rushing of water through the pipes as she starts her shower. It’s quiet enough that Steve can tune it out, so after he cleans up his dishes - he never found his cashews - he pulls out Obama’s autobiography and settles into his deep leather couch, stifling a yawn.

\--

Agent Thirteen breezes into her office, once again, at 9:08 in the morning.

Darcy holds very still.

The agent, however, just drops a series of reports off on her desk, saying, “Chain of command. While Deputy-Director Hill is on assignment, you're processing my reports. If I request backup, I’m asking for either the Widow or a Hawkeye, though it won’t be explicitly stated," she pauses, and then amends, "until afterward, anyway."

Darcy logs them speedily, and then asks, “Flag and pass them on when the Deputy-Director’s… back?”

Agent Thirteen nods. “I need you to catch the patterns I don’t see.”

Darcy feels her confidence crawl out of the hole it’s been hiding in. “Can do, boss.” She leafs into the top-most file, and then squeaks. “Ninjas?”

Agent Thirteen looks momentarily weary. “They always mix up our apartments, which is good, but.”

“Yeah,” Darcy agrees. “Will they come back?”

“Keep reading,” she advises, “those ones are dead.”

Darcy swallows.

“The Widow will help you decode the interrogation portion. She’s been grounded by medical for a couple of days.”

Darcy nods. “Will that be everything, agent?” she asks.

“Agent Lewis,” she nods, leaving just as smoothly as she rolled in.

Darcy looks at Christopher the Office Cactus. “You know,” she whispers mockingly, “ _the Widow_ , just casual.”

\--

Sharon is deeply frustrated by the fact that the ninjas didn’t listen to her and have refused to stay dead. They come back on Thursday, getting the jump on her as she’s hanging up from ordering pizza. She lets out an indignant shriek and decks the first one with a roundhouse kick that dislocates his jaw so severely that she almost feels bad. And then the other one tries to climb her like a tree, and Sharon runs out of sympathy pretty damn fast.

In the end, she group-texts the Hawkeyes while the first bodies are cooling on her floor, and less than twenty minutes later she hears the telltale whistle followed by a series of heavy thumps as the fashionably-late backup are dropped like sacks of potatoes.

\--

Steve is finishing the second of the Obama biographies he ordered when he hears the uncomfortably-familiar sound of a body thumping into Sharon’s apartment wall. There’s some grunting, and some panting, and then a choked-off scream, and Steve is so startled he doesn’t really know what to do. He distinctly hears Sharon yell, “ _Fuck!_ ” and he pulls out the iPod Agent Lewis filled for him, stuffing the buds in his ears and opens a playlist she’s titled ‘Instrumentals’. Then he settles back into his book and tries to convince himself he's not blushing. Nor jealous. No sir, Mr. President.

\--

Hawkeye-the-younger joins her on the balcony as they roll the bodies into the waiting SHIELD vehicle five storeys below them.

“And he never notices?” Agent Bishop uses a compact mirror to peer inside Captain Rogers’ livingroom window without exposing herself. Sharon can’t make out anything in the reflection, but Agent Bishop’s face says a great deal. “He’s _reading_ ,” she extols, “with _headphones_ in.”

Sharon nods and then rolls the kinks out of her shoulders before walking back into her apartment. “Last time he turned a sports channel on really loudly. I think he thinks I’m having sex and his super-hearing is making it awkward. He doesn't chat in the hall anymore.”

Agent Bishop processes that information, and all she comes up with is, “Huh.”

Sharon sighs. “I know, right? Hey, want pizza?”

\--

Steve gets an email from Agent Lewis, saying his tickets are ready and she’s also booked him a private appointment with a tailor in Midtown, because she doesn’t know if his uniform is the best idea.

“Agent Lewis,” he knocks on her half-open door.

She’s on the telephone, and she holds up one finger. He tries not to eavesdrop, but he can make out, “Four? Five. Okay, five ninjas, and a potential relocation,” followed by, “Aren’t we all. All right. Is the Widow still on medical leave?” And that catches Steve’s attention. “I’ll pass it on.”

“Captain Rogers!” she calls cheerfully. “I’ve got your tickets.”

He gives her a half-smile as he sits. Agent Lewis is a little surprised to see him seated, but she passes over the envelop without a word.

“What happened to Natasha?”

She waves a hand. “Nobody tells me anything,” she dismisses.

“They tell you about ninjas,” he retorts.

She makes a pinched face. “There are acres of redacted documents for every dozen words I hear,” she tells him seriously, and if that isn’t the truth, Steve doesn’t know what is.

“Agent Lewis,” he says, pulling up his courage from where it's fallen to his knees, “would you come to the award show with me?”

She gapes like a fish for a moment. “What about Neighbour?” she asks, a little indignantly. It’s not where Steve thought she would go.

“I think she’s, ugh, got her hands full.”

Agent Lewis squints at him. He relents. “She’s been having company. I’m not gonna step in on another man’s girl.”

She squints some more, and then says, “You’re not asking for a babysitter, are you?”

“Uh,” Steve says intelligently, “no.”

“Good,” she says, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, “because I am not good at authority.”

Steve gestures to the office. “You work for SHIELD, ma’am.”

“Because Thor couldn’t handle his hammer,” she mutters darkly, “and the hammer is definitely his penis.”

“ _What_ ,” says Steve.

Agent Lewis ignores him. “Okay. On the condition that this is strictly a work function, because the handbook says no fraternization and I preach stickin’ it to the Man but the SHIELD Man makes me nervous.”

Steve doesn’t really understand what she’s said, so he just nods.

“Okay,” says Agent Lewis, and Steve feels pleased when he realises that she’s blushing. The silence that stretches isn’t as awkward as it’s been in the past, but he can tell Agent Lewis runs a very short fuse, and while she’s pleasant flustered, he doesn’t want to fall from her good graces. “Anything else, Captain Rogers?” she asks eventually.

“Steve,” he says.

She arches a brow. “Anything else, _Steve_?”

“That’s everything, Agent Lewis.”

She grins at him. “Get out.”

He laughs openly. “Yes, ma’am.”

 


End file.
